“From the day I take the oath of office, we’ll rapidly drive prices down and make America affordable again.” That was Donald Trump, speaking at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania last year. But this year he is denouncing rising costs as a “Democrat hoax” and “Joe Biden’s inflation crisis” and declaring, “affordability is the greatest con job.”
Trump has always been a showman, focused on the next episode of his reality series. That mindset works well when he’s the challenger, the outsider, conducting a campaign that goes from rally to podcast, from TikTok to Truth Social, employing his superb performance skills to win the day.
But today he is the president, the nation’s leader. He is responsible for the state of the economy, and blaming others for rising prices and strained budgets doesn’t work. He can’t talk — or perform — his way out of trouble. Biden tried that with “Bidenomics” and failed badly. Reality is not a hoax.
Inflation is running at 3 percent, down from its peak under Biden, but still a burden for working families. Gallup’s latest economic confidence index plummeted last month to its lowest point since July of last year. Just 27 percent said the U.S. economy is improving, while 68 percent said it’s worsening.
In a Politico survey, almost half say the cost of living in the U.S. is “the worst they can ever remember it being,” and that view is held by 37 percent of 2024 Trump voters. About 1 in 4 American households are living paycheck to paycheck. The percentage of subprime borrowers who are late on car loans has doubled to all-time highs.
Yet Trump seems focused on issues that don’t matter to the day-to-day lives of these struggling families — deporting immigrants, bombing alleged drug runners, building ballrooms, lusting after the Nobel Peace Prize.
Trump will never run for office again, but Republicans who will be on the ballot next year are increasingly worried about this disconnect between the president and the voting public.
“Any Republican who refuses to admit we have an affordability problem is not listening to the American people,” former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump loyalist, said on CNN. “It’s real because the American people think it’s real. I cannot overstate that — in a free country — it’s the people who define what is real, not the politicians.”
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican defending a district Trump lost in 2024, says Trump is in denial about affordability anxiety. “Believe me — I hear it every day back home. It’s real,” he told CNN.
Soon, those stresses could get even worse. COVID-era subsidies that helped about 22 million Americans pay for health insurance are about to run out, and many face a doubling of their premiums. But the president and Republicans in Congress seem incapable of devising any sort of remedy.
Trump has never been interested in the tedious business of policymaking, and when he does acknowledge the issue of affordability, he offers unworkable proposals reeking of showmanship and branded with his name — $2,000 rebate checks financed by tariff revenue or 50-year mortgages that would produce some short-term benefits but also create huge long-term burdens.
In a way, Trump is a victim of his own success. The president fills the national stage and screen. He’s everywhere all the time — dominating TV and social media, closing agencies and firing workers, hosting visitors, posting memes and boasting about being the most powerful and successful president of all time.
But all that self-glorification can backfire when he tries to blame Biden for the most critical problem facing voters. It’s a profoundly mixed message. And it rings false.
“Voters aren’t going to go, ‘I voted for Trump to better the economy, but Biden just hamstrung (him) too much,'” Republican strategist Barrett Marson told Politico. “Voters are going to very quickly forget about Joe Biden and just as quickly turn their ire to Trump unless things get better.”
Trump’s a victim of another factor as well: his own ego, his refusal to admit any sort of weakness or failure, his intractable inability to identify with the suffering of others.
Gingrich understands this flaw in Trump and explains: “Psychologically, he hates to admit being in a hole. His whole career is built around forcing the positive.”
Trump has now embarked on a campaign to generate a more upbeat public mood, starting with a rally in Pennsylvania in which he summarized his party’s message: “They caused the high prices, and we’re bringing them down.” But voters know that’s not true.
Steven Roberts teaches politics and journalism at George Washington University. He can be contacted by email at [email protected].
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